Today’s edition of quick hits:
* IRS: “A senior official at the Internal Revenue Service has told congressional investigators that two IRS employees have been disciplined in relation to the special scrutiny applied to conservative groups, Congressional sources told NBC News on Wednesday.” [Update: President Obama will deliver a statement on the IRS situation at 6 pm. eastern.]
* Iraq: “Bomb attacks in Shi’ite areas of Baghdad and in northern Iraq killed more than 35 people on Wednesday, following weeks of violence by Sunni Islamist insurgents determined to unleash sectarian confrontation.”
* Obama spoke this morning in honor of fallen law-enforcement officers who died over the last year.
* Austerity is a terrible failure: “Economic output contracted in the euro zone for a sixth-straight quarter, as a slight recovery in Germany failed to offset recessions in France and Italy.”
* Syria “The U.N. General Assembly ‘strongly’ condemned the Syrian government Wednesday for its ‘indiscriminate’ shelling and bombing of civilians and ‘widespread and systematic’ human rights violations in a conflict that has dragged on for more than two years and left more than 70,000 people dead.”
* More on Syria: “A senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was considering further military strikes on Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants, and he warned the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, that his government would face crippling consequences if it retaliated against Israel.”
* Water bill: “The Senate voted 83-14 for a water infrastructure bill on Wednesday, the first such bill the upper chamber has moved since 2007.”
* A crisis gets worse: “Ahead of possible major actions from the Pentagon and Congress on sexual assault in the military, the U.S. Army is forced to confront yet another instance of a member of the armed forces involved in a shocking sexual assault scandal.” * Adelson: “A Nevada jury Tuesday returned a $70 million verdict against GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson’s global casino and resort company, Las Vegas Sands, in a high-profile lawsuit over the company’s expansion into Macau.” * I lacked the energy to respond to the Politico piece everyone’s talking about, but it’s genuinely awful and a case study in what’s wrong with so much of Beltway reporting. It does suggest, however, that the D.C. media establishment is effectively prepared to go to war with President Obama, in part because it considers him “aloof,” and the White House can expect “ruthless” coverage for the indefinite future. Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
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